Tag: Slower than light travel

After the events in Blue Remembered Earth, the stars are open to humanity. The mysterious alien artifact Mandala, on the planet Crucible twenty-eight light years away, becomes the destination for a swarm of huge spaceships constructed from hollowed-out asteroids. Chiku Akinya is the daughter of Sunday Akinya, one of the protagonists of the first book. She has undergone an unusual procedure, creating two clones of herself and implanting neural machines that synchronize memories. Chiku is three individuals, but also one through the shared memories. One copy, known as Chiku Red, departs to recover great-grandmother’s lost spaceship, fast leaving the vicinity of the Solar System. Another, Chiku Green, joins the asteroid ship exodus on its way to Crucible. The last, Chiku Yellow, remains on Earth. The latter two are the main protagonists. As the distance between Chiku Green and Chiku Yellow increases, so does the communication lag, and the story jumps decades forward in time to keep the rhythm, skipping seamlessly between the two to emulate their shared memories.

Even more than in the first book, the main theme is about the nature of intelligence. Can machine and organic intelligences co-exist? Another major theme is the nature of aging. As life extension is more and more perfected, senescence becomes a rare thing, to the point the withholding of anti-aging procedures is used as a punishment for one of the characters. How does this affect humans?

Unfortunately, this installment suffers from the same issues as the first book. The book seems overlong and the pace is ponderous. The story itself is not very powerful, serving more as a backdrop to a philosophical discussion.

The story is set in the second half of the 23rd Century. Mankind has colonized Mars and the Moon, and has expanded industrial concerns into Trans-Neptunian space. Earth, long ravaged by climate change and pollution, is slowly recovering. In most of human society, the “Mechanism”, a sort of benevolent big brother, and compulsory neural implants have practically eradicated violence and crime. Robots and proxies (advanced telepresence), are everywhere. The Akinya family from Tanzania has been instrumental in the expansion into space, or more accurately the family matriarch, Eunice Akinya, a legendary deep space explorer and pioneer industrialist. As the book starts, Eunice has just died. For the last sixty of her one hundred and sixty years, she has been living in enigmatic isolation in the Winter Palace, a habitat orbiting the Moon. As the family gathers to scatter her ashes, a loose end appears. A previously unknown safe deposit rental on the Moon. Geoffrey Akinya, one of Eunice’s grandchildren, is reluctantly roped into retrieving the contents. What he finds will start him and his sister Sunday off on a treasure hunt to the remote wilderness of the Moon, then to Mars, and beyond.

The concept of making the African continent prominent is an interesting one. Today, the common western view of Africa is that of a lost continent continually ravaged by poverty, war and disease. In this book, Africa has become a center of high civilization, and Swahili is one of the lingua francas of humanity. The setting is intricately designed, with robots, proxies and neural interfaces prevalent. This brings about some interesting aspects of the “what is consciousness” discussion, as advanced autonomous machine intelligences are one of the potential futures envisaged. On the other hand, the group known as the “Pans” sees evolution of humans themselves as the way forward, in order to avoid humans becoming sessile with proxies doing the exploration and the discovery.

The story itself is not the strongest part of this book. It is adequate enough though, and the characters follow its meanderings more as a way to explore the nature of humanity and consciousness than to actually get to the payoff at the end.

This is a long book, and while I don’t mind per se, it is rather ponderous. Mr. Reynolds writes with a smooth and easily read style but I still think the book could have been shorter. The protagonist Geoffrey is rather interesting; initially an unwilling actor in events who is slowly drawn in until he drives them.

This is the sequel trilogy to the exciting Heritage Trilogy. Set a hundred years further in the future, the books flesh out the backstory significantly and satisfyingly. The Marine Corps focused action remains, improved if anything. Douglas (a pen name for William H. Keith) writes about battles, troops and equipment with a gritty and realistic tone.

Star Corps

Descendants of the An, prehistoric overlords of Earth, have been discovered on a planet in a nearby star system. Suddenly, the delegation sent there is attacked by these “Ahannu”. The Marines send a relief expedition on a ten year voyage (one way) to regain control. This book introduces the Marines featured in the first two books of the trilogy, in particular John Garroway, descendant of the main characters from the Heritage Trilogy. The Ahannu are just a bit player in galactic terms, though.

Battlespace

After a ten year voyage back to Earth, the Marines are sent out again. Their twenty year absence has led to significant problems interacting with society, somewhat similar to what happens in Haldeman’s “The Forever War“. This time, the mission involves securing an alien stargate in the Sirius system, thought to be used by the “Hunters of the Dawn”, a very advanced race that destroys any life that could threaten it. At the gate, the Marines encounter another race, the Oannans/N’mah, which has been fleeing from and fighting the Hunters of the Dawn for millenia. After initial violence due to misunderstading, an alliance is formed.

Star Marines

The action now jumps forward a century and a half, but the main characters are still Garroways. The Hunters of the Dawn, alerted by the destruction of their ship and gate in “Battlespace”, have decided that humans are a threat. A Hunter ship appears in Sol system and attacks. Earth is devastatated. The Marines launch a Doolittle Raid on the enemy, trying to buy the humans time. By the end of the Legacy Trilogy things are still very much up in the air about the future survival of humanity.

While the “Marines rule” theme in these books can sometimes be a bit heavy handed, this is quality military SciFi. The back story, only hinted at in the Heritage Trilogy, is fully fleshed out and well imagined.

A Fire Upon the Deep. Hi-tech meets lo-tech in a story with some rather interesting takes on physics and sentience. Don’t be surprised it you don’t understand anything for a hundred pages or so. It gets easier. A fantastic view of the universe, and amazing aliens. A great journey.

A Deepness in the Sky. Chronologically a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep but apart from being in the same universe and having one character who appears in both they are completely unrelated. Interstellar travel is slow, and sometimes plans take decades to come to fruition. A mission to a mysterious star finds fascinating aliens who live on a planet with some pretty extreme climate. The mission itself is subverted by tyrants. The novel follows both the aliens and the humans as they both struggle towards the climactic conclusion: Contact!